The Deep Page 6

  After lunch, they played tennis, and if Sanders hadn’t been at the top of his serve-and-volley game, she would have beaten him. She stood at the base line and slugged long, low ground strokes that landed deep in the corners. After tennis, they swam, had dinner, went for a walk on the beach, and then—as naturally as if the act were the next event in the day’s athletic schedule—made noisy, sweaty love in Gail’s bungalow.

  When they had finished, that first time, Sanders raised himself on one elbow and looked at her. She smiled at him. Beads of perspiration glued strands of hair to her forehead. “I’m glad you saved my life,” she said.

  “So am I.” Then he added, without really knowing why, “Are you married?”

  She frowned. “What kind of dumb question is that?”

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know.”

  She said nothing for a long moment. “I almost was. But I came to my senses, thank God.”

  “Why ‘thank God’?”

  “I would have been a disaster as a wife. He wanted kids; I don’t, at least not yet. I’d resent them for strangling my life.”

  Two days after he returned to New York, Sanders moved out of his apartment and filed for separation from his wife. He knew he would miss his children, and he did, but, gradually, his guilt faded and he was able to enjoy his afternoons with them without suffering such painful regret that they no longer lived with him.

  He had neither sought nor been offered a commitment of any kind from Gail. Though he knew he was in love with her, he also knew that to pursue her like a heartsick adolescent was to invite rejection. He took her to dinner twice before telling her he had left his wife, and when finally he did tell her, she didn’t ask why. All she wanted to know was how Gloria had taken the news. He said she had taken it well: after a short, teary scene, she had acknowledged knowing that Sanders was unhappy and that the marriage was a shell. In fact, once her lawyer had convinced her that Sanders’ offer of a one-time settlement was as generous as he had claimed—so generous that it left him without a single stock or bond—she hadn’t seemed upset at all.

  For the next several months, Sanders saw Gail as often as she would permit. He knew she was seeing other men, and he tortured himself with wild fantasies about what she was doing with them. But he was careful never to ask her about them, and she never volunteered any information. Though he and Gail talked about the future, about things they wanted to do together, places they wanted to go, they never discussed marriage. Practically, there was little point: Sanders was still legally married. Emotionally, he was afraid to talk about marriage, afraid that to suggest limiting Gail’s freedom might make her regard him as a threat to that freedom.

  Sanders had always thought of himself as a normally sensual person, but in those first months with Gail he discovered a reserve of raw lust so enormous that he occasionally wondered if he might be certified as a sex maniac.

  To Gail, sex was a vehicle for expressing everything—delight, anger, hunger, love, frustration, annoyance, even outrage. As an alcoholic can find any excuse for a drink, so Gail could make anything, from the first fallen leaf of autumn to the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation, a reason for making love.

  The day Sanders’ divorce became final, he decided to ask Gail to marry him. He had examined his motives, and they seemed logical, if old-fashioned: he adored her; he wanted to live with her; and he needed the assurance—however symbolic—that she loved him enough to commit herself to him. But behind the curtain of logic there also lurked a shadow of challenge. She was young, widely courted, and, by her own admission, averse to marriage. If he proposed and she accepted, he would have achieved a certain conquest.

  He was terrified of, but prepared for, rejection, and he wanted to phrase his proposal in such a way that she couldn’t take it as an all-or-nothing request. He wanted her to know that if she declined marriage, he would rather continue their current arrangement than stop seeing her. He intended to remind her of their several areas of compatibility. He compiled a list of twelve points, ending with the undeniable fact that it made financial sense for them to live in one apartment instead of two.

  He never got a chance to present his brief. They were having dinner at an Italian restaurant on Third Avenue, and after they had ordered, Sanders took the divorce papers from his pocket and held them up to Gail.

  “These came today,” he said. He picked an anchovy from the antipasto plate.

  “Wonderful!” she said. “Let’s get married.”

  Stunned, Sanders dropped the anchovy into his glass of wine. “What?”

  “Let’s get married. You’re free. I’m free. I’ve gotten everyone else out of my system. We love each other. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure, yeah,” Sanders stammered. “It’s just that . . .”

  “I know. You’re too old for me. You think I’m a sex fiend and that you’ll never be able to keep up with me. You don’t have any money any more. But I have a job. We’ll make out.” She paused. “Well, what do you say?”

  They decided on Bermuda for their honeymoon because neither had been there and because it had good tennis courts, good swimming, and good scuba diving.

  C H A P T E R

  I V

  The lifeguard stood at the water’s edge, holding the Boston Whaler on its dolly. “Going after more forks and knives?” he said as the Sanderses approached.

  “Sure,” said David, “and we’ll look for some of those artillery shells you mentioned.”

  “You get a pretty good price for the brass. But be careful. From what I hear, they’re still live.”

  They slipped the boat into the water, loaded their gear, and shoved off. As they cruised toward the reef, Sanders asked Gail to take the wheel. He took a small flashlight from his pocket and sat on the forward seat.

  “What’s that for?” Gail asked.

  “To see in the cave where that ampule was.”

  “It’s not waterproof. It’ll short out in a second.”

  “Watch.” Sanders took a plastic sandwich bag from another pocket, put the light into the bag, made a knot in the open end, and pulled it tight, then touched a switch on the light. It blinked on. “That should last.”

  “Genius,” Gail said. “Crude, but genius.”

  They found a niche in the reef, guided the boat through, and backed around until the bow faced the shore. Gail stood on the forward seat, ready to throw the anchor overboard, and sighted along her arms, reassuring herself that they had returned to the correct spot.

  As soon as the anchor had caught in the rocks, they put on their equipment and went overboard.

  They swam to a patch of clear sand several yards seaward of the reef, sat on the bottom and peered at the rocks and coral, looking for the cave where the ampule had been found. The sun was almost directly overhead, and its light cut vertical rainbow shafts through the water. Shadows shifted, appearing and disappearing as spots of darkness in the reef. Sanders moved to the right. At the end of his vision, where the blue water darkened and the shapes of rocks grew fuzzy, he saw a shadow that seemed to remain constant. He tapped Gail and pointed to the shadow. She took the flashlight from her weight belt and pressed the switch. A beam of yellow light flashed on the sand.

  The cave was much farther to the right than they had thought, but now, clinging to the coral overhang and looking around, they recognized several pieces of wreckage. They crowded together at the mouth of the dark hole. Gail swept the flashlight’s beam from left to right. The cave was only a few feet deep, and it was empty, carpeted with smooth sand. Sanders looked at Gail and shook his head, saying: Nothing here. Gail handed him the flashlight and pointed to a spot in the sand. There was nothing visible, but as Sanders held the light for her, she waved her hand over the sand, fanning it into a cloud that cut visibility to six inches. She kept fanning in the pool of light, and soon she had made a depression two or three inches deep. She fanned again, and there—at the bottom of the dent in the sand—was a glimmer.
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br />   Sanders put his face into the depression and with the tips of his fingers brushed sand away from the glint. It was an ampule, filled with a colorless liquid. It might have been empty, except that when he moved it, a bubble shifted within. Gently, he pried it from the sand, passed it to Gail, and backed away from the hole he had made. He pushed sand into the hole until it was level once again, and then placed a rock marker on the spot.

  They left the cave and swam along the base of the reef. Now and then, Gail would stop by a rock or timber and flash the light beneath it or fan away the sand beside it. They found nothing.

  Gail moved farther along, then stopped to look for Sanders. He was behind her, digging at something in the reef. She swam to him and saw that he was using a rock to break off pieces of coral. Every few seconds he would stop hammering with the rock and would try to fit his hand into a hole. Finally, he managed to squeeze three fingers into the hole and, using them as tongs, picked out a piece of yellow metal. It was bent and dented, roughly the size of a fifty-cent piece. But as Sanders held it up for Gail to examine with the flashlight, he saw that it was not a coin: there was a concave lip around one edge, as if something had once been held inside. At four points, on the lip there were empty pockets, each perhaps a quarter of an inch in diameter. The metal shone brightly, evidently undamaged by corrosion or marine growth. Sanders turned it over, and in the beam of light he saw the etched letters “E.F.” Holding the ampule in one hand and the piece of metal in the other, he started for the surface.

  When they were back in the boat, Sanders said, “I thought for a minute we might have found a gold doubloon.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know.” Sanders thought. “Jewelry, I suppose . . . but Jesus, it’s awful clean to be old. You’d think it would be worn away, or at least covered with something.”

  Sanders put the piece of metal aside and looked at the ampule. He held it to the sunlight, and the glass sparkled. “Different color from the other one.”

  His eyes focused on the ampule and did not see the figure standing on the Orange Grove cliffs.

  It was after six when the Sanderses reached Treece’s house.

  Treece came out and gestured for the Sanderses to follow him around to the back. “Did you find any more ampules?”

  “One,” said Sanders. “It looks like there’s different stuff in it.”

  Gail handed Treece the ampule. “It was in the same place as last time.”

  Treece nodded at Sanders. “You’re right; different chemical.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. It could be a number of things. A heroin mixture or some other opium-based liquid. Might even be another morphine solution. Did you mark it?”

  “Yes,” Gail said. She gave Treece the remaining rock marker.

  “There were no others sprinkled around?”

  “No, and that one wasn’t on top of the sand. We had to dig for it.”

  Treece said, “I best have a look tomorrow night”

  “Do you want us along?” Gail asked, half-hoping Treece would say no.

  Treece sensed her reluctance. “It’s up to you. You’re welcome to come if you want. Or, you can cut now.”

  “You bet we’re coming,” Sanders said. He pointed to Gail’s purse. “Show him the other thing.”

  Treece studied the piece of metal carefully, running his finger around the lip on the inner edge. He squeezed it between thumb and forefinger, and the metal bent easily. “You found this where?”

  “In some rocks,” Sanders said. “It was lodged pretty tight. I had to break some coral to get at it.”

  “You might have used the other rock to mark the spot.”

  “Why?”

  Treece grinned at Sanders. “It’s gold.”

  “Gold? Christ, it looks like somebody threw it away.”

  “No man threw that away. If you’d dug deeper, you’d like have found his bones.”

  “How come it isn’t all crapped up?”

  “That’s one of the marvels of gold,” said Treece. “It’s chemically impervious. You could put a fresh-minted gold coin in sea water and leave it there till the end of time, and when you went to fetch it on Judgment Day, it’d be as good as new. Nothing grows on it; nothing eats away at it.”

  Gail asked, “What was it?”

  “A cameo of some kind.” Treece pointed to the inner circle. “The picture or etching was in here. These”—he touched, one by one, the four pockets on the rim—“held pearls, the symbol of purity. The lad might have worn it around his neck.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Finding it? Not anything, necessarily. Chances are, a ship went up on the rocks out there, somewhere—God knows where—and the tide washed this and the coin you found in over the reefs. Or a survivor might, have tried to swim to shore and didn’t make it. This is personal stuff, not ship’s treasure.” Treece seemed to ponder his own words. “But, dammit, those answers don’t sit right.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been all over those reefs for twenty years and more. I’m not saying I know every inch of every Bermuda reef, but because of Goliath, that area I know. If there’s a ship out there, I’d have seen a trace of it by now. Guns, the anchor, ballast rock—something.”

  “How old is it?” Sanders said.

  “The cameo? A couple of hundred years.” Treece turned it over in his hand. “It’s Spanish. And damn fine workmanship. Very carefully made.”

  “If it’s a couple hundred years old, Bermuda would have been inhabited when the ship went down—if there is a ship. There could be records.”

  “It depends: if anyone saw it go down, if anyone survived, or if anyone’s salvaged it since. That’s the likeliest—salvage.”

  “Why?”

  “The incident would be over and done with. No need to prolong it with searches or detailed survivors’ accounts, so no pile of records. If I had to guess at the story, I’d say the ship heaved up on the rocks during a storm, but didn’t sink. Maybe a few people—this E.F. included—were washed overboard. When the wind died, they might have caulked her and refloated her. Or, if they couldn’t, they’d’ve stripped her clean—guns, cargo, personal effects, everything—and left her on the rocks. Next big wind’d hash her up and scatter the pieces all over the place. There’d be damn little left of her to spot.”

  Sanders was disappointed. “So you think we’ve found all there is?”

  “That’s just a guess.” Treece handed the cameo to Gail. “What do you plan to do with it?”

  “I hadn’t thought. Can I keep it?”

  “Aye, but legally you can’t take it off Bermuda, not unless you offer to sell it to the Bermuda Government and they decline.”

  “I don’t want to sell it; I want to keep it.”

  “Then, girl,” Treece said with a smile, “you have two options: You can smuggle it out or you can become a Bermuda resident.”

  Sanders said, “When do you want to go tomorrow night?”

  “Come up around sunset. My boat’s in a cove below. We can be on Goliath by full dark.”

  They rode down the hill, through St. David’s, and across the Severn Bridge. On the causeway separating St. George’s Island from Hamilton Parish they were overtaken by two taxis coming from the airport, but otherwise the road was empty. As they passed signs directing tourists to the dolphin show at the Blue Grotto, a green Morris Minor pulled out of a dirt alley and closed to within twenty yards of them.

  The car had been behind them for several minutes when Sanders first noticed it in his rear-view mirror. He pulled as far to the left as he could without striking the coral wall by the side of the road. Ahead, the road bent to the right. As he rounded the turn, Sanders saw two motorbikes and a small truck coming toward them. He put out his right hand and signaled the green car to stay back.

  The vehicles passed, and now David and Gail were on a straight stretch of Harrington Sound Road. There was no oncoming traffic, so
Sanders waved the green car ahead. But the car stayed back. Sanders heard the honk of a horn, and he looked in his mirror. A black taxi was behind the green car. The taxi driver honked again, and Sanders waved it forward. The taxi pulled out and passed the green car and the two motorbikes.

  Sanders throttled down and dropped back parallel with Gail. “That jerk won’t pass!” he called to her.

  “I know. There’s a driveway up ahead. Let’s pull over and let him go by.”

  Fifty yards ahead, Sanders saw a break in the thick bushes and a narrow road that led up a hill to a house; there was a sign, “Innisfree.” He put out his arm to indicate a left turn and cut the motor until his bike was barely moving. He expected the green car to pull out and pass, but it slowed with him.

  Sanders and Gail stopped at the entrance to the driveway. The Morris moved ahead and turned sharply left, nosing into the bushes and cutting off any avenue of escape. A tall black man in a mechanic’s outfit opened the left-hand door and stepped out. The driver, another black man, stayed in his seat

  “What do you want?” Sanders said.

  “Man want to see you,” the tall man replied.

  “What man?”

  “Make no mind. Get in the car.”

  Sanders heard an engine noise, and he glanced down the road to his left. A station wagon was rounding a bend, coming toward them. It was heavily loaded and moving slowly.

  “Move!” said the man.

  The station wagon was about twenty yards away; in a couple of seconds, it would be abreast of the Morris. As if obeying, Sanders took a step toward the Morris, then suddenly darted sideways, sprang onto the hood of the Morris, and, before the man could stop him, leaped into the air at the oncoming station wagon.

  He had a quick glimpse, through the windshield of the station wagon, of the driver’s shocked face. He heard the squeal of skidding tires.